It’s hard to know how to characterize this period of time we’re all living in. “These uncertain times”, “our new normal”, “this unprecedented time”, “the weirds.” That last one is my personal favorite (thanks, Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon!), although it doesn’t fully get at the intense grief and loss we’re all experiencing on some level.

This Harvard Business Review article — That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief — has made the rounds in the last month and helped kickstart some of the conversations about grief I’ve been hearing and participating in lately. In it, David Kessler says that “we’re feeling a number of different griefs…. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”

I see this collective grief in the masks hanging from the dashboard of nearly every parked car I pass on my walks. A clear sign of how our world has changed. And of course, I see it in the eyes of my masked neighbors as I move to the street to give the space, while still waving and saying a muffled “hi” through my face covering — my attempt to establish some sense of the human connection I’m missing so much. The loss of jobs and lives hangs heavy in the air. We’re inundated with news and updates and statistics and it’s all just too much. But it’s real, and we’re faced with the choice of acknowledging our griefs so that we can actually live in them and through them. 

I’ve experienced grief at a personal level in many ways during the time of coronavirus. Grief over the trip to Europe that was canceled, the lost time with family, the lack of in-person connection with friends, and now the loss of work as I knew it.